


Falling to Pieces

by amutemockingjay



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4657491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay/pseuds/amutemockingjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She ran headlong into destruction, letting her world shatter into uncountable pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling to Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written any fanfiction in about four years, so I'm a bit rusty but could never stop writing my favorite pair. Con-crit happily welcomed. Thanks to Martienne for beta-ing the first draft of this.

He had made the nightmares go away. Night after night, where she would wake screaming, trying to break out of the haze of horror that pinned her down in tendrils that she could not shake away. Sweat sticking to her pajamas, she would pull back the covers slowly, slowly. She’d slip from the room, down the hallway, and into his room. He’d be asleep on top of the covers, his roommates tossing and turning in their own lost dreams.

“Wash,” she’d nudge him, shoving him over to make room in the bed.

“What’d you want, monkey?” He’d mumble through a haze of sleep.

“Nothing. And don’t call me monkey.”

He’d be fully awake now, and sit up in bed, brushing back his messy brown hair. “I’ll call you whatever I want, monkey.”

She’d slide into bed next to him. “Asshole,” she murmured.

“Hey, you’re the one in my bed.”

“Like you’d mind. Probably the best damn moment in your pathetic life, getting a girl as hot as me between your sheets.”

“Whatever. Just go the fuck to sleep, South.” He squeezed to the edge of the narrow bunk, giving her plenty of room to stretch as she needed.

With his arms around her waist, she breathed in the scent of him, of the pine soap he used, mixed in with the fresh cotton of the sheets that twisted around his legs. In his arms, she found relief from the world.

* * *

 

She was almost out of cigarettes. She didn’t smoke all the time, only when she was stressed, but lately that seemed to be more often than not. There was only one place she could smoke on the Mother of Invention, and that was near the docking bay. This time, though, when she retreated away from the others into her own corner, she found she was completely out.

Goddamn it. Where was that fucking pilot when South needed her? 479-er did a brisk trade in contraband, everything from Wyoming’s nasty-ass Marmite to York’s never ending supply of coconut rum.

She turned around to leave, resigning herself to stealing some money from her brother to fund her broke ass, when she collided straight with Wash.

“Hell are you doing over here?” She asked, brushing back a stray lock of hair.

“Looking for you,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his track pants and pulled out a pack of blacks, holding it out for her.

“Where the hell did you get these?”

“Where everyone gets their shit. Here, take ‘em.”

She raised an eyebrow. “But you hate smoking.”

Wash shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. But I like making my girlfriend happy.”

Though South always claimed she was above feeling any sort of joy over commitment, she could have practically floated back to her bunk. Girlfriend. She was his girlfriend. Hesitantly, she gave him a small smile. He smiled back, like the complete dork he was.

In Wash’s smile, she could find the meaning of everything.

* * *

 

She pushed him up against the wall of the training room, abandoned for the night.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

His answer was to kiss her harder, his hands entwined in her short hair. He nipped at her skin at the collarbone, harder bites that left her skin purple with bruising. He took his time with her, a first. She had been used to random hook-ups, wilting encounters with losers that were only in it for the pussy. Often, she had been too drunk or high to even give a fuck. But this—sober and present and so alive—had been nothing short of falling into a dream.

He pressed a kiss to her hip bone, and brushed his hand up against her, teasing, testing. She growled with frustration.

“David, if you don’t fuck me right now—“

“You’ll do what?” He whispered against her skin, and flicked his tongue against her clit. She let out the breath she hadn’t even realized she had been holding, arching her back with pleasure.

She grabbed his hair and pulled him back, away from her.

“We’re doing this my way.”

* * *

 

“I fucking hate you,” she screamed, her muscles taut like they were right before a kill, her hair wild at her shoulders.

“No you don’t,” he said wearily. “It’s not me you hate, South.”

“Stop your psych-analyzing bullshit. I’m allowed to hate whoever I damn well please and right now I want your stupid ass out of my sight.”

“We’re in my room, South.” He sat down on the bed, making himself perfectly comfortable and perfectly infuriating.

She reached down to grab anything handy—a shoe—to aim at his head, and that’s when he saw the lines, fresh and red and slashed across her wrists.

He reached out and grabbed her arm. She tried to wrench away, but he was stronger and she was weaker and hell, some twisted part of her wanted him to see, wanted him to be pained at how she ran head-long into self-destruction.

His voice, when he spoke, was hard with anger, low and dangerous. “What the fuck is this?”

Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “Nothing.”

“Bull-fucking-shit.” His brown eyes snapped. “Why? Why would you hurt yourself like this?”

“It’s none of your business, Wash. Just leave the hell alone.”

He let go of her arm and stood up, crossing the room in two strides. “I can’t do this anymore, South. Not if this is what you resort to, and then holding it over my head like that, just expecting me to accept this without any answers.”

“What?!” She shrieked, trailing after him into the hallway. “You can’t just—“

He moved a step further away. His eyes were flint, and South felt herself running against a current she could not stop.

“I can,” he said. “I have limits, South. And this is one of them.”

She could never quite forget the sound his boots made on the floor of the ship as he shattered her heart into uncountable pieces.

* * *

 

“I just can’t do this anymore, South.”

That bastard. That unimaginable bastard.

She hadn’t been angry, not at first. No, the shock set in to begin with. Tears would come later, as she ran through the maze of halls on board the ship until she found an abandoned utility closet. Pushing away the rivers of salt water, she found herself screaming, unable to stop.

It couldn’t be real. There must be some mistake, this must be some new nightmare that she would wake up from any minute. She would wake and find Wash again and be safe. When she emerged, hours later, she felt better because it had not happened at all.

* * *

 

“I just can’t do this anymore, South.”

The words echoed in her mind in the chaos of battle, of Delta whirring as he did his calculations. They were losing, they were overpowered, and she was completely fucked.

A place she rather not be.

The decision was an impulse—though she had thought often of revenge, dreamed of giving him the worst pain imaginable, she hadn’t quite graduated to what she was about to do. But it was so sweet, so tempting, the heavy weight of the gun in her gloved hand. Without a second thought, she pulled the trigger.


End file.
